Kill Your Heroes
by Bluestocking Inc
Summary: From the darkest alleyway to the bright lights of the Bending Arena, Republic City is chock full of stories. Here's a tasting. Sad, happy, AU-heavy drabble series. Eternal WIP. Ships and characters vary.
1. A Palace In The Sun

First in a series of drabbles I'll be writing. They're aimed at telling shorter stories with fewer words. I'm going to try to keep them under 500, but it's a no rules kind of game. If you have any prompts, please let me know in a review or private message and I'll try them out. Feel free to imagine the male as any character you desire.

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For the first time in her life, she feels rain hit her skin.

When she was a baby, it was always snow. And when she came to Republic City, she could waterbend it away without giving it a second thought. It was automatic - like breathing. Rain falls, Korra creates an umbrella for herself out of thin air. Easy.

But today, she doesn't. She sits at their fountain and lets it fall. By the end of it, her furs are soaked through and smelling vaguely of wet polarbear dog. It's not particularly alluring, but he finds her anyway, painting nonsensical swirls in the water with her fingertips. It's strange; she has spent her entire life bending it, but the liquid is foreign and delightfully new on her worn hands. It's warm and healing, like the water Katara would press to her cuts in the South Pole. It makes her feel new. Reborn.

"Korra, is that you?" he takes her face in his hands. "Korra! Where have you been? There was a riot at Central City Station, and we couldn't find you anywhere. It's been days, Kor, where have you..." he notices the recently scabbed over wound on her temple. "What..."

She lifts up a hand full of water, tosses it in the air, and watches it fall in answer.

"Oh." he blinks. "_Oh._"


	2. Virginia Woolf

Well, my under 500 rule went to crap, as you can see. It's written a bit oddly, sorry, but I had to get the message across.

NOTE: This is really more of an AU version of Asami. We know so little about her, now, and I wanted to try my hand at characterizing her. So. Yes.

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Her father always prided himself on being a self made man.

He'd say it at cocktail parties, guffawing and drunk with his eleven-year-old daughter hanging onto his arm for dear life. As a preteen, she had been gangly, with eyes set too far apart for her heart shaped face. Not aristocratic at all; she looked like Earth Kingdom dirt. Even though he told her she was beautiful, he would come home from the office with gifts of form flattering dresses and make ups that burnt her skin instead of dollies and leggings. They were new money, but they liked to pretend they were from one of the ancient earthbending families, endorsed by the old and new alike.

And it had started when she was three, and he took her to a million doctors. "Is she an earthbender?" he would ask, eyes sparkling.

They would shake their heads. "It's too early." or, the more honest ones, "No."

It angered him. His daughter should have every opportunity - every door in all Four Nations should swing open at her touch. And if it didn't, he would force it open in her name.

Soon, scientists got involved. Salt and pepper haired men and women who told her to lie back as they injected pure earth into her veins. Swallow quick as she choked down her medicine and, shush, child, just one more drop. No crying, darling, please. I'll have to change labcoats.

It didn't work. Of course it didn't - bending was in your blood, and though she was descended from the scum of the Earth, she could not twist it to her will.

And it was then that he got involved with the Equalists. A few charitable donations here, a gala there - nothing major, nothing illegal. And on paper, it sounded good. Give her the opportunities without the pain and disease and heartache. They did not know what they did with the money, but it probably wasn't as administrative as her father led her to believe.

When she was fourteen, she woke up beautiful. The frog was a princess, with eyes that sparkled and glorious curves. More dancing and parties for her, now, though. Must show everyone your beauty, dear, and can't you wear the dress that complements your eyes just so?

But she was scared. The city was beginning to take sides. It was turning into a warzone, and wherever she turned, shadows loomed and laughed at her fear. She enrolled in self defense classes, and took to it unusually well. She was conditioned to take to everything unusually well. Nothing was impossible, or even vaguely difficult. Men were wrapped around her pinkie with the slightest tease - a bit of skin there, a touch here. They were not like the old families - no. They were a new, improved nobility.

It was not in her blood, but success was like a poison in her heart, and whether it was stone or flesh that made it up was yet to be seen.

She became more daring. Turn a little too fast, go to the bad part of town with a diamond the size of a robin's egg pinned to her chest, give a Triad member the bird. Test the limits. Live a little, sweetheart, you're getting pale.

And one day, why she was turning to fast and tempting the chronic drunks who lived near the Power Station, she ran into a boy. And it was wonderful, because he was a bender who lived dangerously and liked her enough to kiss her softly why the Avatar stared.

It wasn't love - but maybe it could have been. Laughed at his jokes a bit harder, tailored her dress so they pissed the conservative newspapers off a little more, shed just one more tear over his sob story life. A flapper, a fly girl, a revolutionary who could buy the government if she so desired. But she was not the girl for him, and they both knew it, but he gave her companionship and pretended to care for the girl under the sashaying hips and inky curtain of hair.

Life was too easy to waste with boys easily changed by gunfire and sentiment, though, and the heiress was on her own soon enough. But she continued to play her game. Defeat a few Equalists, anger a few City Officials, get Daddy up in a tizzy about Amon and threats and a hundred other ugly things. All in a day's work for the hidden Queen of the Republic - better known as Asami Sato.

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Please review with mistakes, favorite quotes, feedback on the formatting, prompts, and whatever else your Korra-loving heart desires. Thanks for reading.


	3. All This and Heaven Too

The snow is hot and sticky. It falls slowly and silently, hitting the Air Temple roof without alerting them to its presence. But Korra was a Waterbender far before she was an Avatar, and she can feel the freezing flakes of joy in her veins, the acidic taste of melted water on the back of her throat. She drops the leaf she was trying to lift with a yearning sigh. She walks to the door like she's floating, an ethereal trance brought on by spending far too little time rolling in snow drifts.

Naga feels it, too. Korra finds her outside, catching miniscule stars on her tongue and wagging her tail like it's the best thing she's seen in weeks. Probably because it is.

The Airbending clothes are thin, and the children shiver when they follow her outside. Snow doesn't visit Republic City often, and never this often - perhaps it has come to visit the Avatar, to make sure she's happy and healthy, and offer her a bit of homestyle comfort. And it's the perfect gift; no matter how busy she keeps herself, a bit of homesickness always manages to sneak into her brain and make her shiver in the cursedly Tropical climate she now inhabits. Whatever the reason for the visit, she's so, so grateful for its presence.

The trees, native to the original Air Temples, have an odd and disjointed beauty in their frozen states. Tenzin and the monks hurry to cover them with blankets and drag them inside in a futile effort to save them, but it's a fairytale land of massacre for a while. Even though the freezing landscape belongs to her alone, the view makes her think of Aang and his people, and for the first time in her life, she decides that she is different. She alone will go through life unscathed. It's a pipe dream, but an understandable one, especially for a girl of seventeen years who is so very far from home.

Pema, Ikki, Jinora, and Meelo come out to enjoy themselves, throwing tacky snowballs that fly a little farther than they should. They laugh, and after a few minutes, Korra joins them. But not before she takes a deep breath of the cold air coming off the Ocean, and, just for a moment, feels like she's home.

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_I'm under 500! Woo._

_Review with any prompts you might have._


	4. Young Blood

It's as warm as it gets in the South Pole, but the girl is shivering badly when she arrives in the training center. Despite the cold, she is looking around at the equipment in wide eyed, if tentative, excitement. It reminds her of her own daughter, who is currently off studying ancient runes in some remote corner of the Fire Nation. It endears her to Katara immediately, too, and she puts a comforting hand on the girls back. All these years later, she remembers what it's like to be far from home and scared.

(Perhaps she's projecting, but her innocence reminds her of Aang, even though her cockiness is a tad unsettling.)

She is already quite skilled in waterbending, and takes to the new styles easily. "Look, Katara!" she cried in an all too familiar voice.

She turns, hoping against hope, but it's not a gangly Airbender who meets her gaze but a Water Tribe girl who points at the mile high water spout she created out of a cup of water. She smiles like a proud mother. "Good, Korra. Now, see if you can bend it sideways. Go on, then."

(She excuses herself to her room early, citing a headache and aging bones.)

Because she's already at such an advanced level, her waterbending training lasts only a year. When the White Lotus asks her to stay and observe her as she learns Earthbending, Katara gladly accepts. Her face, old and young in its complexity, brings a new, masochistic light to her current days and old memories.

Her Master is a burly, deep throated military man. Though he was probably picked to tame her, Korra's childish determination softens him more than anything else.

Despite some early misgivings, she takes to his training style as easily as she did Waterbending. It's raining and muddy on the day she finally beats him at his own game, causing him to slip in the mud with the swipe of a pebble.

She's covered in so much mud it's impossible to tell what the original color of her skin was. Katara smiles. "Go clean up."

Twelve-year-old Korra laughs. "What? It's just a healthy coating of dirt."

Katara opens her mouth to respond, but finds she can't.

(It's terrible, that night; she has horrifying, bloody nightmares, most of which feature Korra dying the way Toph did.)

Her heated, passionate personality make Katara sure that she'll be a natural firebender, but it's the element she struggles with the most. Day and night, Korra is in the practice field, trying her to conjure fireballs to no avail. A steady stream of teachers filter in and out, all calling her a hopeless student. "She can't focus." one doubts, while another voices his concerns over her being too serious. It's nearing impossibility, now, and Katara calls on a personal favor.

She hasn't seen Zuko since Aang's funeral, though she was informed of his retirement a few years earlier. It's suited him well; for the first time, he looks rested and calm.

It's a miracle. Korra learns basic firebending in a few weeks, and she's a Mastered it within a year. And smarter for it, too; she badgers them for stories of their shared adventures in the Hundred Years War, seemingly oblivious to how uncomfortable they both are.

"So, you really fought against Avatar Aang?"

"For a while."

Korra strikes the defense pose he taught her only a few hours earlier. "I guess that makes you my enemy, then."

They laugh. She pouts.

(Katara is sad to see Zuko go, for quite a few reasons. She knows the next element Korra will learn, and dreads it deeply, even as she pens the letter for Tenzin's inevitable visit.)

Their grandchildren are both separate people and shades of him, boisterous and eager to learn and strong. Strong in ways she will never be again.

She knows what needs to be done the moment he tells her he can't stay. But it will hurt, letting this girl go - she feels like she raised her, and in some ways, she did. But she doesn't regret giving her Naga's reigns. Katara knows more than anyone that every Avatar has their destiny, and a walled in Training Center is certainly not Korra's.

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_Thanks for reading! Please, take a moment out of your day and leave prompts/comments/suggestions/questions/corrections below._


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